The color the Founder likes and the color the brand needs

In most identity projects Sinh Vũ has taken on, the question of color comes up very early. It is usually a specific color, sometimes with a personal reason attached. It might be a favorite from school days, the color of a foreign brand the Founder admires, or simply a feeling of "I love it the moment I see it." That is completely natural. The problem lies elsewhere: a brand color does not serve the feelings of the person who created it. It serves the buyer's ability to recognize and remember the brand.

Why color is an asset, not just aesthetics

Jenni Romaniuk at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute defines distinctive brand assets by two metrics. The first is Fame, which refers to the level of widespread association in the minds of buyers. The second is Uniqueness, which refers to the degree of not being confused with other brands. Color, when chosen and maintained consistently, can become one of the strongest assets in the identity system. Because it operates before buyers read any words.

However, an asset only accumulates under two conditions: the color stands out enough within the category, and it is repeated long enough and consistently enough. A color chosen by personal taste often fails the first condition. It can look beautiful in a neutral space, but placed in a competitive category, it can turn the brand into "one of many" instead of "unmistakably them."

Step one: draw the industry color map

Before choosing any color, Sinh Vũ performs a simple yet often overlooked task. Sinh Vũ gathers 8 to 12 brands within the same industry, price segment, and main distribution channel. Then, they arrange all of their identities on a piece of paper or a screen.

The result of this step often surprises Founders. Most industries have a "default color" that nearly every player uses, sometimes for historical reasons, sometimes because of copying passed along over many rounds. Traditional finance leans toward navy and blue. Organic food tends to be stuck in the range of greens and earthy browns. Mass-market beauty clusters around pink and clean white.

Once the map appears, the real strategic question begins: do you want to stand within that crowd, or do you want the buyer's eye to stop at your brand first? Each choice has its own costs and benefits. Standing within the crowd brings category familiarity. Standing outside brings stronger recognition, but requires a communication budget large enough for buyers to understand "who this is."

Being recognizable is more important than being different. However, being recognizable requires a distinctive asset that is prominent enough to be remembered.

Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, 2010

Step two: read the industry semantics and buyer expectations

Color has no universal meaning. "Red is energy, blue is trust" is an oversimplification and often leads to the wrong decision. The meaning of a color depends on the industry context, geographic culture, and the set of brands around it.

The right question is: in this industry, what are buyers learning from this color through the brands they already know? This is more important than what emotions this color evokes. If all premium brands in the skincare industry are using clean white and light yellow, a new brand using the same color tones will be understood as premium. This meaning has already been established. Conversely, if you choose a completely different tone, you need enough time and budget for buyers to relearn that new meaning.

This is why a color that the Founder loves may be perfectly suitable in one industry but sends entirely the wrong signal in another. It’s not that the color is bad; it’s just the context is wrong.

Step three: test colors through actual distribution channels

A color that looks good on a design screen does not guarantee it will perform well in actual distribution. This is a step many projects overlook because it requires meticulousness that is not exciting.

Each distribution channel has different requirements for color. Packaging on supermarket shelves needs shelf impact, meaning visibility from a distance under fluorescent lighting, competing directly with adjacent products. Thumbnails on e-commerce platforms display at a small size on a standard white background, requiring a very different contrast. Outdoor signage is exposed to direct sunlight, causing pastel or light neutral colors to nearly disappear. Mobile applications need to consider both dark and light modes.

Sinh Vũ tests each color in the shortlist by simulating it in the context of actual channels. The method is to print samples on real materials, place them in thumbnails next to competitors, and view them on actual phones under various lighting conditions. This step often eliminates a third of the candidate colors, as those colors do not perform well in the main channel, even though the color itself is not bad.

Step four: from candidate colors to an operational system

A correctly chosen primary color is still not enough. It needs to become a system: primary color, secondary colors, neutral colors, combination rules, standard color values for each print and digital environment. Without this system, even the most carefully chosen color will drift with each execution.

According to a survey by Marq and Demand Metric, brands that are consistent in communication and identity report significantly higher revenues compared to brands that execute asynchronously. That consistency starts from having colors defined accurately and adhered to, not from whether that color looks good in the eyes of the founder.

Color filtering is a business decision

When the color filtering process is thoroughly conducted, the Founder often realizes one of two things. Either the color they love truly has a strategic reason for use, or it does not. Both outcomes are far better than choosing a color and then looking for reasons to justify it afterward.

A color chosen based on rationale will become increasingly valuable over time, especially when repeated correctly across all touchpoints. A color chosen based on emotion can place the brand in the middle of a crowd where no one wants to be. Each subsequent color change is a waste of everything that has been built.

This is not a reason to disregard the Founder’s intuition. Personal aesthetic taste is a valuable input. It should be one of many signals in the process, not the sole signal determining the outcome.